CoP1

Down To Earth Stories

Playing it cool with climate warmings

December 15, 1994

THE Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Convention (IPCC) report has confirmed the basis of what many environmentalists have been posting warnings for some time: that the current global emissions of greenhouse gases cannot be sustained by the natural environment. According to this report, even current emissions need to be downscaled by 60 per cent to minimise their deleterious effect on the global climate.

Despite Third World pressures, the Northern countries refused self-restraint in the Berlin Climate Change summit

GLORY became India's, albeit in a limited sense, when it carved out a leadership role at the Climate Summit in Berlin. Supported by China, the Indian proposal of a 20 per cent cut in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions of the industrialised countries by the year 2005 -- a revised form of the earlier Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) draft protocol -- broke the deadlock created by the American strategy of blocking the negotiations on specific cuts on emissions, and the deadline.